Environmental Devastation Quotes
He was describing the impact of a huge asteroid that struck Earth at what is now the Mexican town of Chicxulub—65 million years ago. This cataclysmic event, he believed, in addition to destroying most life in what is now Mexica and the United States, the impact changed the entire earth, wiping out the dinosaurs and most other large mammals. The asteroid was 6 miles in diameter but struck at such a high speed that the energy had this colossal effect. The crater is referred to as the Chicxulub Crater.
This is one of the earliest uses of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction.” Panneloek quoted it in 1948, so it was used by Urey before then.
What makes this quote important historically is to realize the assurances that he had to give the press and the public. This shows the level of anxiety about nuclear science that existed at the time and some of the absurd claims that critics and skeptics made. While it was true that there were same dangers in the nuclear testing, some of which the authorities were ignorant of, they were not of the expansive catastrophic magnitude that the critics claimed. Almost all new science and technology develops a Luddite community of opponents who want the technology stopped or at least slowed much. These opponents almost always exaggerate dangers in order to alarm public opinion via fear. At the same time, almost all the new scientific arenas eventually display and disclose problems and potential dangers of which the scientists and policy makers originally unaware. But they are almost always different from those the original critics claim. For example instead of environmental concern for radiation caused mutations in the animal life or the problem of what to do with radioactive byproducts of making atomic weapons, the warnings were that the water would flow out of the oceans and that gravity would be nullified.
